The research unit was created in 2016 and since 2019 has been jointly run by the Max Weber Centre and the Gotha Research Centre. Its purpose is to foster new work and coordinate current scholarship on natural law in the early modern period, which we take to stretch from the Reformation to the early nineteenth century. Within this framework, the focus is on the flowering of natural law in the period after Hugo Grotius and especially the shaping of the subject as an academic institution across Europe. This is reflected in the main project, "Natural Law 1625–1850", which we are conducting in collaboration with the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies (IZEA) of the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg. The major publication project “Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics” is edited by the research unit, and a series on “Natural Law 1625–1850” is being launched by Brill under the general editorship of the directors of this project. In addition to IZEA, we have close links with The Institute of Intellectual History at the University of St. Andrews. The research unit welcomes doctoral researchers and visiting fellows at the Max Weber Centre and the Gotha Research Centre who are interested in early modern natural law to become affiliated with the research unit.
Main Project
Natural Law 1625-1850. An International Research Project (Halle/Erfurt)
The project is focussed on natural law as an academic institution in the period from 1625 to 1850. The ambition is to combine traditional approaches to natural law as a set of ideas with a comprehensive history of academic reception, transmission, and uses that takes into account institutional, political, and legal contexts. This ambition can only be realised by supplementing the published record of natural law – its textbooks and treatises – with a much wider range of sources. Accordingly the heart of the project is a large digitization programme of natural-law texts, commentaries, and pedagogical programs, supplemented by a bibliography and a data base
A project of such magnitude has to be organised at a European level, with the ambition of eventually including also teaching in the colonial institutions in North and South America. We see it as a 'federal' project of participating institutions, but working to a coherent plan. Most of the institutions will want to deal with their own natural-law record, and their local web sites are or will be linked to the present site that functions as a portal for the project as a whole, including the bibliography and data bases.
The project is being directed by Frank Grunert, Knud Haakonssen, and Louis Pahlow and rests on a group of about twenty collaborators, representing the participating universities and libraries across Europe. The project has a large and growing body of members, who are scholars of natural law wanting to make use of the materials provided by the project.
Research projects
The birth of rights universalism from reformed international law. The natural law of Heinrich and Samuel Cocceji and its controversial reception in the European Enlightenment (Dr Stefanie Ertz)
The aim of the project is to analyse the natural law teachings of Heinrich Cocceji (1644-1719) and his son, editor and continuator Samuel (1679-1755). In a monograph, Cocceji's natural law, which centres on a theocratic-voluntarist concept of inalienable liberties, is to be presented (1) in its political and ideological-historical contexts and (2) in its controversial reception in the European Enlightenment. Forgotten in the 19th century, Cocceji's doctrine of natural law was long neglected in favour of the prominent theories of Pufendorf and Thomasius. However, the project will show that the natural law of the Cocceji represented a veritable, systematically strong alternative to Pufendorf's natural law theory, which was based on the anthropology of defects and embedded in the ethics of duty, and was also perceived as such by many contemporaries until the Vormärz, so that it provided important impulses for the development of liberal-egalitarian theories of rights in the German and Scottish late Enlightenment and can claim an important place in the modern genealogy of subjective rights. The project is dedicated to the development of this theory of natural law in the relatively long period from around 1670-1720 and at the same time describes a history of interdependence: interdependence of genesis and reception, and interdependence of Calvinist (as well as Huguenot) and Lutheran (Halle) early Enlightenment. These interrelationships were intrinsically involved in the development of the Cocceji's doctrine of natural law and must therefore also be researched. This results in a much more complex and differentiated picture of the early Enlightenment characterised by natural law than was previously the case.
Principal investigator: Dr. Stefanie Ertz
Funding: DFG (317.139 EUR)
Period: 1 February 2024 - 31 January 2027
Institutionalising the Law of Nature and Nations: The Universities of Kiel Greifswald and Rostock 1648-1806 (Dr Mikkel Munthe Jensen)
The project is about the history of the teaching of natural law at the three north German universities in Kiel, Greifswald and Rostock during the period 1648-1806. It is concerned with why, how and to what extent this academic discipline developed in three different political settings along the Baltic coast. The project is based on the general presumption that natural law was of great significance for the period's intellectual development and state building endeavours. The general aim of the project is to show that "modern" natural law, even at smaller north German universities, was playing an important role in this matter.
Principal Investigator: Dr. Mikkel Munthe Jensen (Halle)
Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG) € 350,000
Period: 1 July 2022 - 30 June 2026
Collaboration projects
Academic natural law in absolutist Denmark c. 1690-1773: Professionalisation and politics
Project Director: Dr. Mads Langballe-Jensen, University of Halle-Wittenberg
Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG) € 340,000
The teaching and formation of natural law at the University of Halle. The first period: 1694-1740
Project Director: Dr Martin Kühnel, University of Halle-Wittenberg
Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG) € 330,000
Director
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Prof. Dr. Knud HaakonssenDirector of the Research Centre for Early-Modern Natural Law (Frühneuzeitliches Naturrecht) (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies)Project Director of the Natural Law 1625-1850. An International Research Project (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies)
Members
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Dr. Cesare CutticaMember of the Research Centre for Early-Modern Natural Law (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies)
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Prof. Dr. Emmanuelle de ChampsMember of the Research Centre for Early-Modern Natural Law (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies)
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Dr. Frank GrunertProject Director of "Natural Law 1625-1850. An International Research Project" (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies)Member of the Research Centre for Early-Modern Natural Law (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies)
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Coordinator and member of the Research Unit for Early Modern Natural Law (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies)
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Dr. Mads Langballe JensenMember of the Research Centre for Early-Modern Natural Law (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies)
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Member of the Research Center for Early Modern Natural Law (Forschungsstelle für Frühneuzeitliches Naturrecht) (Gotha Research Centre)
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Prof. Dr. Gunnar Folke SchuppertMember of the Research Centre for Early-Modern Natural Law (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies)
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Prof. Dr. Peter SchröderMember of the Research Centre for Early-Modern Natural Law (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies)
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Prof. Dr. Cornel ZwierleinContract teacher at the professorship for Global history of the 19th century (History Department)
Cooperation partners
- Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies (IZEA), Halle
- Institute of Intellectual History, St. Andrews
- see also the project page ‘Natural Law 1625-1850’